Ep. 2: More Than Just Increasing Yields. Agriculture Can Take a Positive Turn
In episode 2 of the Resource Positive Agriculture podcast, host John Mesko sits down with Erika Wagner, Potato Crop Manager of Yara North America, and Brady Stover, Sales Agronomist of Yara North America. They share how the food chain continues to be under pressure to produce enough food for a growing population while also reducing its environmental footprint. Yara North America is taking on this challenge by working to develop an Incubator Farm Network, which helps farmers combat many of the challenges they face trying to keep up with demand. In addition, Yara is working toward growing a nature-positive food future by building solutions to decrease carbon footprint, improve water and nitrogen use efficiency, regenerate soil sources, and much more.
Yara’s newly established Incubator Farm, located in Washington’s Columbia Basin (south-central) region, was developed after meeting with local growers. Yara looked at historical yield trends, size distribution, and any stability issues the growers might have. After looking at those issues, the fertility program was created to improve the yield, the potato size, profile, and quality so that marketable potatoes will get to the customers. In addition, Yara diligently chose products that had been produced in a nature-positive way.
While Yara is focused on its Incubator Farm network, they are also creating additional positive changes throughout their agriculture practices. Recently, Yara has developed the process of abating nitrous oxide emissions from its production practices, which has cut its carbon footprint by 50-60% compared to other fertilizer processes. With this success, Yara has taken its findings a step further by introducing green fertilizers using electrolysis from renewable energy instead of fossil fuels. Currently, they are continuing to look into improving nutrient, water, and other various on-farm efficiencies that support farmer profitability and affordable food production.
When looking at sustainability and Yara’s inputs, Yara hones in on agronomic practices that apply nutrients at the correct time and at the proper rate to utilize fewer inputs while still meeting crop demand. “We have all said that if it doesn’t work for a farmer, it is not a sustainable practice, and it is not something that would be adopted,” said host, John Mesko.
So, what is the best way to quantify and deliver results around sustainability? Brady Stover believes that growers need to have a collaborative mindset to focus on both very granular, data-heavy metrics and understand the use of cover crops and a much more shallow data drive. This is stated with the understanding that each farm will have completely different aspects within each region that they need to improve upon.
“I really hope that we track our metrics and we have goals to attain with those metrics, but we’re never stopping pushing the envelope on the practices at the same time, so I would like to improve the practices while quantifying the metrics and I think that those metrics over time, as we continually change practices, should evolve and push for better and better each year as well,” said Brady Stover.
While some years are good, some years are subpar, but over the long haul, the goal is always to move agriculture forward, move agriculture in a positive direction, and tell a story that benefits the whole industry. As a member of The Potato Sustainability Alliance, Yara North America is committed to working to advance potato sustainability and towards best understanding the role that fertility plays in the potato sustainability story.
Connect with: Potato Sustainability Alliance
Twitter: @AlliancePotato, @johnmesko, @positiveagnow
LinkedIn: Potato Sustainability Alliance
Bios
Erika Wagner:
Erika Wagner is the Potato Crop Manager at Yara North America. She works with teams across North America to help develop potato crop nutrition programs to meet crop needs throughout the season using 4R nutrient management principles. She also leads Yara’s Potato Incubator Farm initiative in the Columbia Basin of Washington which is aimed at fostering collaborative research to explore the role of crop nutrition in potato production productivity, profitability, and sustainability.
Brady Stover:
Brady Stover is a Sales Agronomist for Yara North America covering both Oregon and Washington. He focuses on working with potato growers to use crop nutrition as a way to achieve their market demands. It is his passion to take fertility to the next level as the industry faces pressure to produce more with less inputs. He continually works with growers in the industry by hosting formal agronomy summits, helping construct individual fertility management plans, and carrying out yearly large-scale field trials in collaboration with growers.
About Yara:
Yara’s mission is to responsibly feed the world and protect the planet. As a member of The Potato Sustainability Alliance, Yara North America is committed to working to advance potato sustainability and towards best understanding the role that fertility plays in the potato sustainability story.
Transcription
John Mesko: (00:06)
Resource-positive agriculture describes what we all want, a food and farming system which makes full and responsible use of the natural world. In this podcast, I’ll explore how agriculture can be a force for good on everything from the environment to people and our society. This is John Mesco and welcome to episode number two of the Resource-Positive Agriculture Podcast. I had the pleasure of sitting down with a couple of colleagues recently, Erica Wagner and Brady Stover, both with PSA members, Yara International. We talked about some of the things that they’re doing at Yara to help understand, quantify, and promote positive outcomes in agriculture and what that looks like.
Erica Wagner: (01:00)
I’m Erica Wagner. I’m the potato crop manager with Yara North America.
Brady Stover: (01:04)
I’m Brady Stover, sales agronomist with Yara North America covering the Pacific Northwest.
John Mesko: (01:10)
Fantastic. Thank you both. Maybe for starters, I can ask you, Erica, how did Yara arrive at this ambition that was stated in the article that I referenced earlier of a growing-in-nature positive food future?
Erica Wagner: (01:28)
Thanks, John. Yara was founded over 100 years ago, and since our founding, our core mission has been to help feed the world and protect the planet. Today presents us with two current crises, pending food crises with current conflicts in Eastern Europe, and a growing climate crisis, where agriculture has a role in helping to address both crises, so addressing these two issues in tandems is achievable but takes a committed approach to achieve and a nature-positive food future is a natural ambition for Yara, building on a hundred years of agronomy knowledge and keeping true to their history of respecting the planet. This nature-positive goal is actually a Yara global mission and the incubator farm in Washington is our way to keep with this mission and put that goal into action locally.
John Mesko: (02:26)
Well, I think that you hit on a really important consideration here. The impact of agriculture globally is tremendous, obviously in terms of food production, but also the impact on the environment. I think that more and more, what we’re seeing is the desire of organizations, everybody from growers to input suppliers, to food processors, all the way to retailers and customers, to see that impact bring the environment and the resources that we use in agriculture forward to make a positive impact rather than a negative or even a neutral impact. What kinds of positive impacts is Yara looking to bring to agriculture?
Erica Wagner: (03:16)
One way that Yara is uniquely helping to answer some of these goals is our manufacturing operation operations. They have developed a process of abating nitrous oxide emissions from their production, which can cut carbon footprint by 50 to 60%, compared to other fertilizer manufacturing processes. This actually has been in the market for two decades, so it’s been a goal of Yara for quite a while. They’re actually taking this even further today by developing green fertilizers using electrolysis from renewable energy instead of fossil fuels. They also recognize that a systems approach is the only practical way to improve agriculture’s environmental footprint, so we’re also looking into how to improve nutrient use efficiency, water use efficiency, and efficiencies on farm to support farmer profitability and affordable food production.
Erica Wagner: (04:22)
I was also going to mention we’ve formed the Better Soil Alliance to help embody this goal. That is a collaboration we have starting in California with the almond industry, looking at sustainably-focused solutions as that industry faces water scarcity and drought, so we’re looking at different solutions to help with nutrient use efficiency, water use efficiency, and collaboration across the industry in the California almond industry.
John Mesko: (04:57)
That’s fantastic. You’re looking at production practices for products that Yara is selling. What kinds of on-farm production practices are being considered? Maybe this is a question for Brady to talk a little bit about the incubator farms and what’s happening in regard to on-farm production practices.
Brady Stover: (05:21)
Yeah. On-farm, I’ve noticed as far as sustainability is going and with Yara’s inputs, we’re really honing in on the agronomic practices of everything so that we are applying at the correct time, at the right rates, trying to get more while using less inputs by just meeting the demands of the crop. Then also outside of Yara’s scope, notice a lot of improvements for less passes across the field. I talked with a grower earlier this week and he talked about going to a true one-pass plant, where it would be multiple cultural practices in the past now all engulfed into one pass, so reducing fuel there and carbon footprint of going across the field time inputs, so on that side, there are improvements to become more sustainable all the time.
Brady Stover: (06:27)
Also, I’ve noticed with our involvement, we are able to go to these growers and retailers and explain to them where certain products are coming from how they’re being produced and how we are striving to help in this situation so that they are better educated to choose a product that maybe is produced by having less carbon footprint or the environment in which it was produced, is it best for nature, and its employees?
John Mesko: (07:01)
Yeah, I think that’s excellent. One of the things that strikes me in this conversation a lot is the notion that if it’s economically viable for the producer, it passes the first test of sustainability. We all say that if it doesn’t work for a farmer, if it doesn’t work on the farm, it’s not a sustainable practice, it’s not something that will be adopted, it’s not something that’ll be used over and over. On the other hand, or in addition to that, I should say, to your point, Brady, if a farmer can reduce the passes over the field, they’re going to reduce fuel costs, they’re going to be more efficient in their inputs, and they’re also going to be more efficient in their carbon footprint, for example.
Erica Wagner: (07:51)
Right. Naturally, if you’re producing more marketable processable yield at harvest and in storage by changing practices, you’re doing in the field, you have a lower carbon footprint, and in the end, that’s good for the grower, and that’s good for everyone because better yield and the same land equals a lower carbon footprint.
John Mesko: (08:16)
Sure. Excellent. Let me ask you this, and this could be either one of you jumping in on this one, but in our work at Potato Sustainability Alliance, we are working to determine the best approach to quantify and deliver results to our audiences around sustainability. In some cases, folks want to know very granular, very data-heavy metrics, like carbon sequestration, or something like that. In other cases, people want to know and understand the use of cover crops, a much more shallow data dive, you’re just looking at numbers of acres rather than measuring something in the soil, and so looking at practices, or metrics, or both, what from your perspective is the future of the discussion? Do you think we are going to lean towards one or the other? What are some of the things that you’re hearing out there that folks want to hear from Yara in terms of these metrics?
Brady Stover: (09:27)
Yeah, so I’ll jump in on that one. I think we need to focus on both. I hope that we can continue with a collaborative mindset to be open to both. I don’t know that just focusing on metrics or hard data would necessarily get us to the end goal that we all want to achieve.
Brady Stover: (09:48)
I say that because within each region, and even within that region, each farm should have and could have potentially completely different aspects that they need to, let’s say, improve on or could improve on, whether that be soil health, you mentioned cover crops, maybe that’s something that particular farmer grower needs, whereas another farmer down the road may have already been doing that for a couple of decades, but they need to improve stability, so like Erica brought up earlier, that higher tonnage per acre does decrease our carbon footprint, but maybe they had storability issues, so that end product was not getting to the consumer, so it couldn’t be considered in that total yield getting to the marketplace, so maybe we work with that grower on inputs and stability so that those products, those potatoes could get to the marketplace, whereas before they hadn’t.
Brady Stover: (10:55)
I really hope that we track our metrics and we have goals to attain with those metrics, but we’re never stopping pushing the envelope on the practices at the same time, so I would like to improve the practices while quantifying the metrics, and I think that those metrics over time, as we continually change practices, should evolve and push for better and better each year as well.
John Mesko: (11:24)
Yeah, and I think I agree with you, Brady. The thing that I am working on, one of the things that I think is important for PSA to think about and strive toward is, how do we get information back to our growers? How do we get information back to buyers and retailers of our products? How does that report take place? How do we report a positive trendline? To your point, we might have metrics, hardcore data going in a direction that doesn’t reflect the overall sustainability of a process or a crop, or an entire farm. How do we report back a positive trend line? I don’t have an answer to this. I’m asking for input because it’s something that our industry really needs to consider. Do we give an individual grower a grade, A, B, C, or D? Do we give gold, silver, bronze? How do we say someone is moving in a positive direction when we take into account all of the different measurements, whether they’re practices or hardcore data collection results?
Erica Wagner: (12:39)
Right. That’s a great question, a complicated question. I don’t know if there’s one answer, but Brady and I were talking about this earlier today. We thought that you’d want to look at it in a few different ways. One is progress towards a goal year-on-year for each individual farm, but also maybe each part of the industry and the industry as a whole because it’s not just growers. The sustainability story of potatoes starts before the farm and ends after the farm, so we thought maybe in a year where you have a bad year on-farm because the weather was terrible and yield wasn’t as expected or quality took a hit, maybe a different part of the industry will make a discovery that they can process or sort potatoes in a certain way to cut back on carbon footprint, and overall as an industry, you improve, but maybe the grower portion that year struggled because of something uncontrollable, so we were thinking it’d be important to look at progress for each individual part, but also as an industry, and then also learn each year from what worked and change what didn’t work year-on-year to hopefully, as an industry, move forward.
John Mesko: (14:03)
Well, that’s great. I mean, Erica, you’ve really hit on something I think that could be really helpful to us, and that is reporting across the entire industry, and not just from the farm, right? Right now, at PSA, we collect information directly from farmers on sustainability practices, we collect information directly from processors on nutrient and irrigation information, but that is the extent. If we represent an industry, maybe there are all kinds of data points along the value chain that could be included to paint a much wider picture of the entire sustainability story, as you say.
Erica Wagner: (14:54)
Yeah, absolutely. If you look at the life cycle of a French fry, there’s certainly a lot of things that go into the final carbon footprint of that French fry, and there’s a lot of potential areas where we can improve upon what we’re doing now, or maybe make new technological discoveries that help with that process, so it’s certainly good to look at it as a holistic approach. Yara is a part of that story and that’s where we’d like to make sure that we’re fostering collaboration to help answer part of that problem in the way that we can.
John Mesko: (15:36)
I like what I’m hearing. I’m really glad that Yara is a part of the Potato Sustainability Alliance and part of this entire movement of tracking things moving in a positive direction. To your point, some years are good, some years are bad, but over the long haul, our goal is to be moving forward, moving in a positive direction, and being able to tell that story really benefits the whole industry.
John Mesko: (16:05)
This episode of the Resource-Positive Agriculture Podcast is brought to you by the first annual PSA Summer Symposium, being held July 11 through 14 in Boise, Idaho. In the first event of its kind, the potato industry will come together proactively and pre-competitively to address the need for sustainability, measuring, quantifying, and reporting. Each morning, we will begin with a learning session designed to educate and challenge ourselves as we expand our industry-wide sustainability program, and we will have dedicated time each day for various PSA working groups and committees to meet in person, build our teams, and address some group-specific questions and recommendations. For more information and links for registration and sponsorship, check out our website, potatosustainability.org. The PSA Summer Symposium, July 11 through 14 in Boise.
John Mesko: (17:05)
But I would like to shift gears just a bit. I want to hear a little bit more about the incubator farms, and maybe Brady, maybe this is a question for you, but what kinds of work specifically are going on on those farms? How are you involved? What is the kind of medium and long-term expectation that you have? How are people who might be listening to this, going to be able to learn about or engage with the results?
Brady Stover: (17:34)
Yeah, so on the incubator farm, we had met with the grower. We looked at historical trends of yield, their size distribution, and any stability issues that they were having. We took those issues or those things that could be improved and we created a fertility program that we started at planting and we will feed this crop with this particular fertility program throughout the year and the goal is to improve the yield, the potato size profile and quality so that there’s more marketable potatoes that will get all the way to the customer, and at that same time, we chose products that were produced in a nature-positive way from companies that are very forward-thinking in this and are trying to produce with the lowest carbon footprint. Between selecting the correct products for the crop itself, and then finding the cleanest version of that product, we are hoping that our carbon footprint per ton drops dramatically, all the while the grower is able to improve their economic stance on it by choosing these products and having more product come out when it’s time to collect the potatoes out of the storage.
John Mesko: (19:12)
Sure. Another question I’ve got, though, are these single-year trials or are they multi-year trials? How many of the incubator farms are you looking to engage in?
Brady Stover: (19:25)
We have a couple of fields at this location for this incubator farm. It will be a multiple-year trial. Because we are focusing so heavily on the carbon footprint, we are working with this grower a year in and year out, and with the potato rotation itself, we will be changing locations while monitoring past locations so that we can circle back and continue to maybe look at soil health. But with this marketplace and having potatoes be a rotational crop, we will be doing a continual trial, hopefully in the location with the same growth.
Erica Wagner: (20:08)
Also has down the road a small plot research farm where we’re looking at some more future-focused treatments. We understand that the potato industry water use efficiency and soil health, the nutrient use efficiency are all very important to meet our sustainability goals, so we have that site where we might be looking at some more experimental treatments or experimental crop nutrition programs or new digital tools that allow us to monitor crop needs in season, and we can learn from those small plots and scale up anything really interesting and exciting to these half-pivot plots just down the road, so it’s kind of a combination approach. We would be very excited about any collaboration across the industry, so maybe if another group is looking at water use efficiency, we’d be happy to collaborate and see if there’s any treatments we could put out there and work together to scale up in the future. Any of those topics, we’re very interested in.
John Mesko: (21:17)
The invitations are out there, right?
Erica Wagner: (21:19)
Absolutely.
John Mesko: (21:20)
If people want to jump in and work on these incubator farms a little bit, they can reach out to you guys, and we can have a true collaboration. Wouldn’t that be great?
Erica Wagner: (21:32)
Yep. Come visit anytime.
John Mesko: (21:34)
Let me ask you, do you have a plan in place for disseminating some of the learnings, some of the results that you hope to see?
Erica Wagner: (21:45)
This is our first year, so we will put out reports and announcements as we gather the data and understand our findings. We do plan to learn year from year, so I’m sure we’ll make some interesting discoveries this year and adjust next year and learn as we go, but we will absolutely be reporting anything interesting and exciting that we find that helps us reach those sustainability goals.
Brady Stover: (22:18)
Yeah, I’ll just reiterate what Erica said about reaching out and collaborating. You can find us both on Yara’s website, along with, in the winter, we do a Top Potato Agronomic Summit where we will also be talking over this information and continuing to collaborate with growers. What we do with those meetings over the winter is we bring growers and retailers into the room and talk about all of the agronomic principles behind the potato and how fertility can help improve, whether it be size distribution or storability. We talk over all the trials that we talk over a lot of this stuff as we work through it during the year, so again, yeah, feel free to reach out to either of us.
John Mesko: (23:08)
Okay, great. Well, my guests today, Erica Wagner and Brady Stover, both from Yara International. Thank you both so much. I appreciate you joining me on the Resource-Positive Agriculture Podcast.
Erica Wagner: (23:20)
Thanks, John.
Brady Stover: (23:21)
Thanks for having us, John.
John Mesko: (23:26)
Thanks for tuning into today’s episode. To hear more podcasts like this, please rate, review, and subscribe to resource positive agriculture. We want to hear from you. Remember to visit potatosustainability.org for show notes from this episode, leave your feedback, and to learn more about how PSA is collaborating for potato sustainability. Thank you, and remember, stay positive.